Britain relying too much on Indian nurses: report

LONDON: An expert report has recommended that Britain should not rely too heavily on health workers from countries such as India and the Philippines.

The National Health Service, the report added, must do more to recruit nurses locally.

The study by the health think tank, the King's Fund, found that in some hospitals as many as a quarter of nurses were trained overseas. Experts raised concerns about whether international recruitment was sustainable in the future.

The King's Fund also voiced fears about the effect of taking much-needed nurses away from countries with even greater healthcare problems.

Their study focused on three unnamed London hospitals, showing that the capital depended far more on overseas trained health workers than the rest of the country.

One of the hospitals revealed that one in four of its nurses trained abroad.

Figures from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) showed that 14 percent of its members based in London qualified overseas, compared with four percent in Britain as a whole.

Most overseas nurses came from the Philippines, Australasia, India, Ghana and Nigeria.

One hospital revealed that it had nurses from 39 different nations working in its wards.

Since 2001, the NHS code of ethics bans the recruitment of nurses from more than 150 of the world's poorest countries, but this does not apply to the private sector.